Palestine: One protester killed and 42 injured in Gaza

Israeli forces have killed one Palestinian and injured at least 42 others during protests on the edge of the besieged Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said a Palestinian had succumbed to the injuries he sustained during clashes east of Rafah City in southern Gaza on Friday.

The ministry added that 42 people, including women and children, had also been wounded during the 50th week of the “Great March of Return” protests.

Four medics and two journalists were among those injured, according to the report.

Tensions have been running high in Gaza since March 30, when the protests started. Palestinian protesters demand the right to return for those driven out of their homeland by Israeli aggression. They also demand a halt to Israel’s inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The clashes in Gaza reached their peak on May 14, the eve of the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day, or the Day of Catastrophe, which coincided this year with Washington’s relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.

More than 260 Palestinians have so far been killed and at least 26,000 others wounded in the Gaza clashes, according to the latest figures released by the Gazan Health Ministry.

Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, causing a decline in living standards. Israel has launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.

The military also regularly conducts airstrikes across the territory against alleged targets belonging to Palestinian resistance movements.